TEEN

I really wanted to hate this. I was hoping for a cheesy, corporate celebrity tie-in scamming money out of a willing fanbase. Sadly, it’s a stunningly-drawn, intelligent, jet-black study of adolescent isolation. Dammit.

Hana is a loner. Her parents are divorcing, and her only friend is a poster of the eponymous popstrel. She spends her evenings on the internet, interacting with the fantasy lives of the people she can’t bring herself to talk to at school. One day she discovers a mysterious website offering five wishes, and accidentally enters into a Faustian pact with a demon-figure called Romeo. The reinvention of la Lavigne from sulky pop brat to Manga-esque guardian angel might raise a few eyebrows, but the combination of Joshua Dysart’s disturbing storyline and Camilla d’Errico’s gorgeous, smudgy artwork produces something searing, angsty and beautiful that should strike a chord with all teenage girls, and anyone who’s ever been one.